


jude.

by ignitesthestars



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, Fantasizing, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 16:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14856507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: Jude.His hand forms the word without even thinking about it. Not surprising, really; his body has been doing all kinds of things with regards to the human girl lately, mostly without his consent.





	jude.

**Jude.**

His hand forms the word without even thinking about it. Not surprising, really; his body has been doing all kinds of things with regards to the human girl lately, mostly without his consent.

 _Valerian shoves her to the ground, thrusting the apple into her mouth like something vulgar, and rage rises in Cardan’s gullet, heady and sweet. He moves on instinct, snatching the salt from the girl’s basket as Nicasia dances away with it like some cackling gnome_. 

_Pleasure lights in Nicasia’s gaze, difficult to uncouple from cruelty. She thinks he’s joining the game, thinks he’s going to taunt the girl further and he_ is _, but roiling under all that rage is the sour tang of terror._

_Cardan can laugh with them all he likes, but deep down he knows his first instinct was to save her._

_(Human blood contains salt, his brain supplies, and he scatters the vial to the wind)._

**Jude.**

The image of her stripped and humiliated is burned into his brain. He presses his palms into his closed eyes, probably getting ink on his face in the process, but it doesn’t do anything except make the mental image of her explode in colour.

It’s not that it feels good. Cardan is used to the heavy satisfaction of exerting his power over someone, the same simple pleasure Nicasia had shown of hurting someone and knowing there’s absolutely nothing they can do to hurt you back.

This isn’t that. 

**Jude.**

If she’s going to break, he wants it to be because of him. Or for him. He’s not entirely sure what the difference is between the two, but it dances before him just out of reach, is maybe why he has such a taste for her on her knees, but not for the amusement of his entire cohort. Why he wants her to admit his superiority over her, but has no interest in seeing her dead when it would be so easy to make her a corpse.

He has no taste for real blood, Cardan tells himself, but she drives him to the kind of distraction he has seen other faeries murder over. He suspects it’s why her mother died, why she was dragged into his life in the first place.

**Jude.**

If she were dead, the source of his agony would be gone. 

**Jude.**

But so would the source of his fascination. Cardan remembers the sound of her choking on golden fruit, the acid taste of disgust thick in his throat at Valerian’s obvious pleasure, at his own fear that - what? That something might happen to her before he had made her submit to him?

That something might happen to her at all?

**Jude.**

**__** _It’s no fun if she doesn’t choose it._

His memory runs a heavy eye over the shape of her human body, the dips and curves that stole his imagination before, that are rendered crystal clear now that he knows. It hadn’t felt like a violation before he knew the way her clavicle swept down to her breast bone, knew the round of her stomach and the dimples on her thighs. Faerie skin was so smooth and untouchable, any flaw stark against an otherwise perfect surface.

**Jude.**

Her body tempts him to ruin. He wants to explore every curiosity, every difference, map them all with teeth and tongue and hands, and--

**Jude.**

It’s her eyes that drag him back. The glazed, _stupid_ thing faerie fruit had made of her. It had delighted the others and finding a weakness in her should have delighted him, but it wasn’t really in her. It had been forced upon her, a poison in the guise of bliss and as much as he may want her, as much as he tortures himself with this nightmare, it doesn’t suit him to use her like this.

**Jude.**

He wants her willing.

**Jude.**

Not as a part of some bargain. Not to protect her worthless sister, or because of some idiot prank, or because some magical fruit has found its way to her tongue. He wants her to tilt her head at him, clear-eyed and arrogant and absolutely maddening, and he wants her on her fucking knees because she chose it.

**Jude. Jude. Jude.**

On it goes. There are tears in the paper. He stares at it for a moment, unseeing or choosing not to, and then shoves it away. Out of sight, out of mind.

If only the girl would follow.


End file.
